By al.lucyna
I surrender
to the teenage wasteland
that was going to the mall, buying up every
five-dollar surprise bag
keeping the landfill pockets flowing through plastic veins
and the liquid made me feel alive, if only to tear through
more more more
I surrender
to the chemicals that layered my skin, marketed
to make me a better human as long as I bought it
because it was two-for-one
because it was on sale
need need need
my heart still lusts for those material lifelines whispering in my ear
you finally belong
clutching onto the pulsing voices,
I lean in closer to hear threads ripping open,
dropping goods at my door
and I
surrender
that I never stopped them, told myself
I didn’t know any better
I couldn’t stop taking, you know?
it was so easy to steal from corner stores and ladies’ pockets even though it wasn’t me
I got blamed for it all the same
by the end, I had to decide which friends were the burners
and which ones got burned
which ones were disposable? It was my turn to set fire, ignite
good riddance to cheap friendship bracelets that snap under pressure
to watch their beads unfold
and roll roll roll
in my palm, I count their everlasting
devotion to me
drop them one by one off the edge
watch them tumble
like they’re a purple, but
my favourite colour is blue now
and it’s uncool to care about things that don’t matter anymore
About the Author
al. lucyna/ Alley L. Biniarz is a writer, poet, and creative writing teacher with an MFA in Creative Nonfiction. She writes about nature/the environment because, as many writers before her, she is fascinated by the relationship between human and nature. She believes that through art, conversation, and education, we can fight climate change together.
Her creative work can be found in Feminist Space Camp and The Drive Magazine, and she is currently one of the poetry editors for Harbor Review.
About “it’s cool, officer, it wasn’t me”:
al.lucyna loves to leave her poetry to open interpretation, because words and images can mean different things to different people. So, she leaves you with two things:
1. We can’t change the past, but we can ALWAYS change our future.
2. It is always cool to care.